When developing a WordPress site, you may want to turn on the PHP error warnings and notices to ensure that everything is running smoothly before launch.

Open your site’s wp-config.php document, located in the root of your WordPress install. Look for one of the following lines (either one may appear, but not both).

define('WP_DEBUG', false); // error reporting is off

define('WP_DEBUG', true); // error reporting is on, but may not be displaying

Replace the existing line of code (whichever of the above is currently in the document) with the following two lines of code. This will ensure that error reporting is not only on, but also being displayed at the top of the frontend (what your users will see) of your page.

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true);

Reload the page to see any errors being reported. Make the necessary fixes to your site so that the errors go away.

Once you have the PHP errors fixed, you will want to turn off error reporting.

Comment out the two lines of code you placed to turn on error reporting (or the original one line that was in place if you didn’t replace it above), and place the following four lines of code.

This turns off the PHP error reporting.

// define('WP_DEBUG', true);
// define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true);

ini_set('display_errors','Off');
ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL );
define('WP_DEBUG', false);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

You can now visit your website to confirm that the PHP errors, notices, and warnings have disappeared from your website.

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